SETI Institute scientists Michael Busch, Franck Marchis, Melissa McGrath and Matt Tiscareno will have their research featured at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in October.

The work of SETI Institute scientists was featured at several important scientific conferences and events:

XVI International Clay Conference: Janice Bishop

International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life: Gozen Ertem

MCMC/ARC GCM Extended Group Meeting: Lori Fenton and Tim Michaels

Fourth Conference on Early Mars: Virginia Gulick and Natalie Glines

International Conference on Environmental Systems: John Rummel, Margaret Race and J. Andy Spry

ISS R&D Conference: Oana Marcu

Division of Dynamical Astronomy: Mark Showalter and Robert French

Popular media featured the work of the SETI Institute as well:

Gizmodo: Ross Beyer

NBC News: Seth Shostak

Science News: JR Skok and Matt Tiscareno

Public presentations included:

Franck Marchis: Astronomy on Tap, Observatoire de Marseille, and Observatoire de Paris

Seth Shostak : SETI Talks

Dale Andersen returned from a field expedition to the Canadian High Arctic – and returned the SETI Institute field expedition flag to headquarters

John Coughlin started a new position as director of the K2 Science Office

Margaret Race was appointed field editor, planetary protection for the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology

Mars 2020

NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will be a rover mission that will explore a part of Mars that may once have had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. Specifically, it will examine rock and soil samples, and could potentially return samples to Earth for further analysis. SETI scientist Pablo Sobron is one of the researchers working to develop instruments and data processing tools for planetary exploration. This summer Pablo will conduct research in Timmins, Canada to calibrate instruments that will be carried by the rover to test rocks for minerals such as talc, chlorite and carbonate – if such minerals were detected on Mars, it could indicate the presence of water and the possibility of life.

The Perseid meteor shower puts on a show that is visible from Earth every summer, peaking in August, but continuing into September. The Perseid meteor shower is caused by meteoroids, bits of solid matter ejected from Swift-Tuttle comet. SETI Institute scientist Peter Jenniskens coordinates a network of video surveillance cameras in the San Francisco Bay Area that track meteors moving through the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere. This network is part of NASA’s Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) project. Visualizations of meteor streams are created using data from CAMS.

Laser SETI is the SETI Institute’s crowdfunding campaign to develop a unique optical SETI program – a network of specialized cameras placed around the globe to look for laser flashes from deep space. It will scan the whole sky all the time for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. The campaign will end August 18 and the fundraising goal is $100K.

August 25 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Voyager Golden Record. Frank Drake, who conducted the first-ever SETI experiment and is Chairman Emeritus of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees was a member of the committee that determined what to include on the Golden Record, a committee that also included Carl Sagan.

The Golden Record, which includes sounds and images that portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth was included on the space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 whose mission was to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Their mission continues to this day, with both probes exploring interstellar space and sending data and images back to Earth.

Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute and host of the Big Picture Science radio show and podcast. Speaking recently at Langley Research Center, Seth recalled a prediction he made during a speech in Germany nine years ago, that we would find evidence of aliens within two dozen years. While that prediction hasn’t yet been proven true, technological innovation and powerful data analysis tools is speeding up the search.